Pickup Basketball and the Futbol Pichanga

Is there something universal about play as an arena to perform and negotiate masculinities? On this page I will compare and contrast the way young men in Peru play pickup soccer with each other. The data comes from young men at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) in Lima, Peru. While I did not interview any participants for this particular study, I was a participant in these pickup games at this university in 2008-2009.

Soccer in Peru

“Soccer, a game of strict rules where one competes for the domination of space and primacy, contains the basic rules for interaction among men.This sport is identified with the most essential masculine values because it is settled with the body and with corporal force, a masculine attribute that soccer does not just express but also produce. That is to say, training and working the body to produce vigor and model the sensibility around masculine values: competition between men, loyalty to the group and exclusion of the feminine” (Fuller 2001: 153, trans J. Perez). Soccer is seen as the sport and is central to the performance of masculinity in Peru for males of all ages. In the United States, men have a number of different sports from which to choose. For instance, basketball, baseball, and football are all very popular sports accessible to people from all socio-economic backgrounds.

Pickup Soccer at La Catolica

The fundamental difference between pickup basketball at Notre Dame and pickup soccer at La Catolica is the extent to which the games reaffirm group loyalties and the lines by which these loyalties are drawn. Students at Notre Dame typically go to the basketball court with friends from their residence hall and do not necessarily claim any sort of group identity. On the other hand, the Peruvian students go to the soccer field as an entire team and look for other teams to play against. They typically form their team based on their carrera (field of study) or facultad (college). For instance, a group of young men who study law together may play against a group of young men who study medicine. They see themselves as representing their facultad and by playing together they reaffirm their identity as students of a particular field of study. Notre Dame students do not have this sense of loyalty to a field of study and do not articulate group identity when they play pickup basketball.

Language

Norma Fuller, who dedicates a significant section of her book to the pichanga, sees language as an important dimension for the performance of masculinity. She characterizes the language of the men as a “language of war, of masculine values in opposition to the domestic world” (Fuller 2001: 152, trans J. Perez). The language of the pickup basketball game did not seem to be one of war. Furthermore, she notes that “the language of soccer, plagued by references to domination, control and possession of women and the rejection of passive, homosexual sexuality, produces and reproduces the great texts of masculine culture [in Peru]” (Fuller 2001: 155, trans J. Perez). From my experience with the pickup basketball game, the language on the court does not contain these sorts of references. Although as I mentioned in the section on language, these references may occur in how the players recall and reconstruct pickup basketball experiences. This, however, can only be addressed with further investigation.